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Friday, 12 December 2014

An eventful week for my daughter Izzy

I've blogged many times in the past about my daughter Izzy and how proud of her I am. However, this week in particular, she's exceeded anything I ever managed to do as such a tender age.

First up, on Sunday, was the British Gymnastics, SE Regional Floor and Vault Finals at the Guildford Spectrum in Surrey. Thankfully not as early a start as last year so managed to get there for a nice and respectable 10am. Found myself in the arena and spotted my ex-wife Clare and her Mum Anne waving at me from up in the stand, so went to sit up with them.

On admission, you get a competition sheet which tells you who is in each group. Izzy was starting on the Yellow vault. To put this competition in perspective, there were four separate vaults and four floor areas, just to the judges could see as many Gymnasts as possible.

Izzy started on the Yellow Vault

It wasnt long before all the Gymnasts came out to music and then went through a group warm up before getting 10 minutes individual warm up on their respective apparatus.

It appeared that Izzy's warm up vaults were ok and was landing really well but unfortunately, her 2 judged vaults were a little off, with the smallest of skips on landing but because of that she was marked down to 6.400 and 6.400.

After patiently awaiting the rotation, Izzy hit the floor.

Izzy scored 7.450, the highest score of any Gymnast in her group by some margin. However, given the result of the vault, we estimated that she was in about 5th or 6th place overall but we got the pleasant shock of her name being announced in 3rd place at the presentation, so she got the bronze medal.

Izzy on the podium in 3rd place

Blimey, a right little star on our hands.

As you can see, she was rather pleased with her bronze medal.

Two days later, Izzy was doing the other thing she loves. Singing. This time in her choir, the Semiquavers. She sang solo on 'The Angel Gabiel'...

Just wow. I know all parents get super gushy when they speak about their offspring so bare with me but Izzy is pushing her boundaries so much more than I did at that age. I found it difficult to say "Yes Miss" for the morning register at school let alone getting up in front of a packed church singing solo like that.

Anyway, as you can tell by the applause at the end, it went down a treat. So not only do we have a little Gymnast on our hands, we've also got a potential X Factor winner to contend with too lol.

At the end of the Christmas concert, the choir masters awarded Izzy the 'Ron Baker Trophy', in recognition of her hard work, her attitude and her willingness to help others. So nice to see her not taking after her Dad lol.

Izzy with the 'Ron Baker Trophy'

So Izzy has had one hell of a week this week. You couldnt wipe that smile off her face if you tried. One thing is for sure though. At this rate, she'll need a bigger medal hanging rack than her Dad's.